


Paper cups

by IanMuyrray



Series: Fersali [5]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Gotham’s Writing Workshop, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 16:18:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14524452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IanMuyrray/pseuds/IanMuyrray
Summary: Fergus deals with his biological mother's death





	Paper cups

**Author's Note:**

> for gotham's writing workshop, week 14  
> "he was in the course of running away from his previous life"

The phone was ringing, rousing Fergus out of fitful sleep. The stiff hotel bed crinkled as he rolled on his side to pick up the receiver.

“Hullo?” He blinked blearily into the gray sunlight peeking through plastic blinds.

“Fergus Fraser,” came the response. “How is California?” It wasn’t a question.

She had tracked him down. “Marsali.” He frowned as he realized how long he had been radio silent.

A whoosh of air came from her side of the line. “I’ve come to get you. What happened?”

Fergus said nothing as he stared unseeingly at the cracked ceiling.

Her voice fell, barely audible through the bulky, plastic earpiece of a hotel phone. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay,” he replied. He hung up and rolled onto his back. After a time, he dragged his hands over his face, deliberately tracing the shape of his eyebrows with his fingertips.

Marsali knocked on the door, brushing away strands of blonde hair as they webbed with static electricity across her shoulders. When the door opened, she held aloft the breakfast she had grabbed from Starbucks. A cheese Danish and black coffee. “Hungry?” He grunted and let her inside the dark room. Her tentative smile fell.

The rented room was spartan in its furnishings, looking more like a jail cell than overnight lodgings. Fergus must be in yesterday’s clothing, she reasoned, observing how he wore wrinkled jeans and a rumpled shirt. His hair was unwashed, his cowlick pronounced. He—and the room—reeked of stale cigarette smoke and vomit. He wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

She pressed the coffee and Danish into his hands and stood on tip toe for a chaste kiss, which he granted. She knew he believed  **he was in the course of running away from his previous life**.But it was attached to him like a shadow, always following.

He dropped the Danish onto the disheveled bed, then gripped the disposable coffee cup with both hands, finding its bleeding warmth a bleak comfort. Still unable to look at her, he leaned in for a second close-mouthed kiss from Marsali, which she granted.

He inhaled. “How did you find me?”

She took a step back. “I looked at your credit card statement online,” she said, pausing. “Ye disappeared.”

“Yeah.”

White noise from the wall-unit air conditioner whirred around them, competing with the muffled sounds of the television next door. She watched him carefully.

“Did ye find her?”

Fergus’s forehead creased with misery, but he nodded. Sniffing, he bent and reached for his leather bag, kicked thoughtlessly under the bed. He pulled out his old iPad, cracks like a spiderweb across the cloudy screen. Light briefly glared against his drawn features, then he held it out.

She pulled her hands from her vest’s pockets and took it, careful, as if handling a newborn.

It was a woman nearly identical to Fergus, if a couple decades older. Their likeness was apparent in the shape of his brow. The color of his eyes. The bridge of his nose. The set of his mouth.

Marsali tensed, using her thumb to scroll down. It was an obituary and funeral notice, dated about 2 weeks ago—around the time Fergus had left Scotland for California.  _No surviving children,_  it said.

She had known Fergus’s biological mother was very sick. She supposed she didn’t realize  _how_ sick.

Marsali stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, mindful of the coffee and iPad they each held. A tear overflowed as she rubbed a thumb on his collar. She saw his eyes were sunken and bloodshot as he stared past her shoulder, clenching his jaw. She dropped the iPad and her hands went into his hair, pulling his head down to her. He collapsed, gasping sobs into her chest.

When he stilled at last, she gripped his free hand. “Now let’s get ye showered.”

* * *

 

She parked and pulled the keys from the ignition. She sucked in a breath, held it. Exhaled. Looked over at Fergus. “Ready?”

He nodded and slowly heaved the door open, car chiming at him as he exited. She reached into the backseat to grab the wine purchased at the nearby gas station and paper cups swiped from the hotel room.

Fergus had made his way up the hill already, head bent, searching for the woman’s name. The marker was easy to spot, with fresh turned earth and grass sprouts acting as a grim beacon. He followed lamely as she sat cross legged near the grave. He came down beside her and pulled his knees up under his chin, like a child might.

She twisted open the wine bottle and poured a cup for him. His skin was drawn so tight it was nearly transparent; she could see blue and purple veins in his cheek and neck, spreading down into his shirt.

She held the cup out to him. He accepted it without looking at her and threw it back like a shot. She followed suit with her own drink, grimacing at the sourness. She refilled his drink, catching his eye as she passed it his way. He sipped it this time.

The whiteness of the overcast sky cast the two of them in a harsh, white light, like they sat under unforgiving fluorescent bulbs.

Nearby, a bird chattered excitedly from a tree, puncturing their stillness, and their silence.

“Do you think—” Fergus started, stopped, tried again. “Would it have mattered?”

He had been contacted by a living donor champion, a person who advocates on behalf of those needing organs. They said that his biological mother needed a kidney. Badly.

His body grew rigid as he remembered the well-rehearsed and well-researched desperation in the voice of the champion.

She battled addiction her whole life. Friends, family, her insurance, and now her body, abandoned her. She was excluded from official transplant lists because of her history with substance abuse. She had suffered several seizures, could barely breathe, and was developing an arrhythmia. She was isolated, bed bound, and dying.

Fergus must have been the last living soul who could help.

He had never met her before—had never even stopped to consider her existence. His earliest memories were of being shuffled through foster homes and half way houses until Jamie took him in.  

He hesitated to help, feeling overwhelmed by the actualization of his mother and the intensity of her need for him. Her abrupt introduction disintegrated the coherence of his daily life.

Marsali was the only one who knew what was going on, and she only knew because they had been laughing over buttered popcorn in a theater lobby when he picked up that phone call. Marsali knew only the little he could bear to say out loud; Jamie and the rest of the family knew nothing.

After several days of anxious meditation, he offered to donate whatever he could give.

He had stopped to browse transit maps after deplaning at LAX. It was then that his iPad chimed with a notification that opened slow on public Wi-Fi. She was gone—heart attack.

 _Would it have mattered?_ He swallowed hard, waiting for her answer.

“No,” Marsali said, resolutely. “No, it wouldn’t have mattered.” She ran a hand up his hunched back, coming to rest at the nape of his neck. The bird chirped garishly as she tangled fingers in his curls.

“Did…” Fergus asked, slowly, testing the waters, feeling the words in his mouth. His eyes met Marsali’s. “Did I do this to her?”

“No, dove. It’s not your fault.” Her chest tightened as she leaned towards him, pressing her forehead to his temple. She spoke quietly, yet deliberately, “She struggled. She wouldna have made it.”

He nodded, blowing out a slow, steady breath.

They sat quietly on the cemetery’s hill for a long time, not saying much, sipping their drinks as the sky turned from white to gold with an evening sun. Their stolen paper cups crumpled and stained with use while the wax coating seeped into the tart bitterness of wine. The chirping bird had quieted at some point and came down from the tree to hop near them, giving them looks out of one black eye, then another. Fergus held out his fingers, but it flittered away.

On the way back to the hotel, they stopped to grab a pizza. Waiting in the parking lot for Marsali to pay inside, Fergus clicked on his iPad. He saw an email from Jamie, who thought he was on a work trip. Subject line:  _LOVE YOU. MISS YOU._  He cracked a faint smile and opened it. He was greeted by a laughing selfie of Jamie and Claire, with one of Brianna’s eyes overlarge and photobombing the corner, as if she had stuck her head in at the last minute.

_Can’t wait until you come home! xx Da, Ma, and Bree_


End file.
